Tuesday, June 10, 2014

Bracelet of the Day: Crystal Chain with Pearls

CRYSTAL CHAIN VARIATION

11/0 seed beads Miyuki "Dark Bronze" (11-457D)

4mm Czech pearls "Ivory"

This is another bracelet that I'd been meaning to make for a long time. I had made two samples of it with 4mm pearls and also with 3mm pearls. At the time I thought I preferred the thinner, more delicate version with the smaller pearls but I changed my mind in the end. Although it's a very simple design, I think it looks rather elegant. I used Deborah Roberti's free "Crystal Chain" pattern but repeated the first motif for the entire length of the bracelet. Click HERE to download Deb's pattern.

One thing that I discovered while making this bracelet was that I needed to adjust some of the beads a little as I added the three seed beads above each motif. If you push them into the proper shape as you add them, the pearls will sit upright better instead of leaning slightly on an angle like beads tend to do with Right Angle Weave. It's one of my pet peeves with that stitch. The beads have a tendency to alternate leaning left and right with every other motif. At least with this pattern, I seem to have fixed that issue by just manually pushing and pulling the pearls with my fingers so that the seed beads aren't causing them to lean. Although they're still not perfectly straight up and down, I think you can see a big difference between my final bracelet and the pearls in the sample in the middle in this photo:

When you add each group of three seed beads, push center one so that it's more in line with the other two. The little arch should look softly rounded rather than pointy. Also, gently pull the current motif slightly away from the previous one to give the pearl more room. I included a shot of the 3mm sample and I think you can see that those pearls don't seem to be leaning as much as the 4mm ones, probably due to their tiny size.

While looking more closely at that photo, I just remembered something else. I used different pearls in my bracelet than I used in my 4mm sample and perhaps that's part of the reason why I was able to get the final version to look so much neater. The pearls in the 4mm sample are inexpensive Chinese pearls. I see now that they are kind of flat on the ends where the holes are. The Czech pearls that I used in my bracelet are much more round. The 3mm pearls in the top sample are also Chinese and have flat ends as well.

I'm wearing this bracelet today with my Tiny Treasures Earrings, which I posted about HERE.

Thank you for your wonderful tweaks. I do this same "pushing" when making a wavy herringbone. If you make the beads sit right on each row it looks so much better. I also love the tops of earrings using diamond chain. I had wanted a better top loop for earrings and I think this is it.!!